Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Dichtomies of Truth

Recently I was invited to be a part of a corporate resource team. We have a library of proprietary materials which are designed to inculcate and promote various service culture values based on specific brand concepts and other tools gleaned from the ancient Six Sigma methodologies. As a new trainer, I am invited to either present some of these materials or to observe how these materials are delivered to participants as part of their learning culture program.

I have also learnt to write and use American English words mixed with Standard International English and British English usage, to produce some sort of version of English the client would understand, because it reflected their regular use.

In all these colour, I also encountered concepts of thinking, being and belonging which otherwise would have remained in the archives of some grand academic or learning institution, or dusty shelf in a bookstore.

Fortunately, I made much attention to the people who took an interest in mentoring me -current and past - and have been able to grasp many of these concepts and ideas.

The interesting dichtomy I quickly realise is that the two clients I have - one which hires me for my assignments and the other which I am assigned to present these programs - work in a tangent world, where their contact with each other is somewhat oblique. The hiring client issues all the program materials but do not seem to reflect the working ideals and concepts of the materials; the assigned client is taken through these materials and supposedly with the aim of espousing them.

After the assignments are completed with the program client, as a trainer, you sense their enthusiasm and their interest in the values of the brand and culture. Then you correspond with the hiring client and find many difficulties - one comment is fedback here, another there; smiles are shown to you upfront when you appear at their desk, but as you walk away they assess and critically feedback to their superiors every possible fault of yours from their point of view. You  are invited to this event and that, incidentally, because you happen to be around, but if you weren't, you would not have been invited anyway. No, you cannot comment or give feedback which is negative towards them because it would cause a fracas and everyone would be unhappy with you, and that would be a "derailer" in your ability to manage your relationships with them. Then you would be typed a "difficult person to work with" and this would happily be built up as a case against you. As it reaches the pinnacle of your tolerance and you want to leave, the team throws a smiley and a lifeline, and you respond with earnestness not realising they are all laughing at your desperation.

On one hand, we are evangelists for the team and the corporate culture, promoting one approach and vision for them to all the various locations in the division. On the other hand, internally, there is rife issues. Immature and manipulative behaviours, soliticitation of negative feedback, personal attacks disguised as feedback, and all sort of organisation faux pas. Internally, there seem to be some tolerance because the team is considered to be "high tolerance" but in practice, at the slightest fault, there is no demonstration of those behaviours you expect from a highly mature, skilled, professional team that espouses the very values and behaviours in the programs they send out as assignments to their business units.

It makes one wonder. Do we work for clients for income or because we are motivated by belief. Are we gratified by the work we do at our assignments which leave us willing to tolerate the bickering attitudes of people that do not practice the same values preached?

It seems to be that the team at the hiring client needs to undergo the very brand and experience, and leadership training, in order for them to espouse those values and live them out credibly. It is ironic, but sometimes in the castle, the young princes and princesses may not know what it is like to live in the ordered civility of society below their high walls. It is a long time dichtomy about truth and reality.

And that heresy about "reality is perception" was invented by admen who needed to sell campaigns to finance their lifestyles. There is no reality in one's perception. Reality is an amalgam of perception and only intelligent creatures possess that faculty. It does not mean that reality does not exist for the nudibranch. More important is the context of what constitutes a reality. Your reality may be flawed and confined to your microcosm, which does make another person incorrect. The truth of the scientific method is to establish that common threshold of observable and tested knowledge which can then be held as a common reality. That then transmute from reigning hypothesis to scientific fact, which can be evolved to higher truths over time.

Scientific observation and fact is what we need to deal with, not dainty perceptions by faulty observers.